Fire May Be `Saving Grace` Expert: Surface Burning May Stop Muck Fires Later

February 3, 1985|By John Mulliken, Staff Writer

Six months ago, wildlife biologist Tim Breault couldn`t even start a one- acre grass fire near U.S. 27 in Everglades Conservation Area 3A.

Breault, who recently moved to the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission`s Panama City office, said he attempted to start a controlled burn by dropping fire bombs from a helicopter onto the then green, wet sawgrass.

``They`d hit and go off, but we couldn`t keep a fire for more than a quarter acre,`` he said. ``The fuel was so sparse we couldn`t get it started.``

What a fire-bombing biologist could not achieve, nature has done in a big way.

What started Tuesday as a small brush fire along U.S. 27, three miles south of the Palm Beach-Broward county line, turned into an 80-square-mile blaze that may be a blessing in disguise. The surface fire may protect the northern end of the Everglades conservation area from severe environmental damage in this year of highly destructive fires.

``It could be a saving grace,`` said Tim Regan, a game commission biologist.

``If we don`t get any muck burns, this fire will just reduce the available fuel. Then if we get fires from lightning strikes or whatever later on, it will help reduce the risk (of muck fires).``

Now, the surface fires are burning off the brush and tall grasses but are not igniting the soft, life-giving muck of the Everglades.

This week`s fire had a humble start: a fisherman may have accidentally ignited the freeze-dried brush beside the canal that parallels U.S. 27. Overnight, it exploded into a major brush fire, a wall of leaping flames that could be seen for 10 or more miles away.

Since then it has eaten a ragged pattern of scorched sawgrass stubble covering more than 50,000 acres. Forestry officials said the fire died out early Saturday.

While Breault couldn`t burn the eastern edge of Conservation Area 3A in July, he was able to burn about 12,000 acres to the west of there. In doing so, he inadvertantly created a firebreak that helped contain the current fire.

``It stopped when it hit that old burn,`` said Ellis.

But brush fires continued to spread on other fronts, searing its way toward the Terrytown Levee, the northern border of Everglades Conservation Area 3A.

As the fire burns out, biologists and forestry officials are crossing their fingers, hoping to escape this massive wildfire without any debilitating underground muck fires.

In the past 15 years, muck fires have badly scarred the section of the conservation area north of Alligator Alley. The major losses have been tree islands, which are refuges of high ground for deer and other wildlife in periods of high water, and the rich, life-giving muck itself.

In a June 1980 report, Jim Shortemeyer, a game commission biologist, found that an average of more than three inches of muck had been burned away on the north end between 1970 and 1980. Some sites lost more, including areas where 1977 fires stripped away six inches, and other spots where 1974 fires consumed as much as 10 inches.

At the time, Shortemeyer wrote, ``In addition to extensive (muck) losses occurring over large acreages, the most detrimental (muck) losses were sustained around tree islands in (Conservation Area 3A). Intermediate elevations surrounding most tree islands in the northern one-third of (the area) were destroyed by (muck) fires. These intermediate elevations accounted for 95 percent of the islands before the fires.

``These losses will cause a long-term adverse impact on the wildlife resources of (Conservation Area 3A).``

One year after Shortemeyer`s report, severe muck losses were recorded again during the devastating fires that occurred in the 1981 drought. Two years after the report, heavy rains flooded the area, causing a controversial deer die-off, which was especially severe in the northern end where so many tree islands had burned away.

Early in the 1982 Everglades flood, a small doe was spotted on a jumble of bedrock which had been the base of a tree island which had been destroyed in the 1981 fires. Barren of vegetation, the rocks offered little relief for the starving deer.

Facing with the growing threat of Everglades habitat losses, the game commission has increased its efforts to prevent muck fires by burning away fuel sources before periods of extreme dryness as Breault was trying to do.

In late January, the combination of the hard, plant-killing freeze and a severe rainfall shortage left the Everglades especially vulnerable. Rainfall since August has been only 35 percent of the historical average, and the rapid drying had led District Forester John Tamsberg to predict a fire crisis as early as November.

He was right.

By Friday, Florida had lost 60,513 acres of wooded land to brush fires and approximately 60,000 acres of grasslands for the month of January. The average over the last 10 years for January was 1,069 fires burning 25,420 acres.